From the freaking New York Times, of all places.
Excerpt:
Over the past two decades, the majority of Americans in a country deeply divided over gun control have coalesced behind a single proposition: The sale of assault weapons should be banned.
[…]But in the 10 years since the previous ban lapsed, even gun control advocates acknowledge a larger truth: The law that barred the sale of assault weapons from 1994 to 2004 made little difference.
It turns out that big, scary military rifles don’t kill the vast majority of the 11,000 Americans murdered with guns each year. Little handguns do.
In 2012, only 322 people were murdered with any kind of rifle, F.B.I. data shows.
[…]This politically defined category of guns — a selection of rifles, shotguns and handguns with “military-style” features — only figured in about 2 percent of gun crimes nationwide before the ban.
Handguns were used in more than 80 percent of murders each year, but gun control advocates had failed to interest enough of the public in a handgun ban. Handguns were the weapons most likely to kill you, but they were associated by the public with self-defense. (In 2008, the Supreme Court said there was a constitutional right to keep a loaded handgun at home for self-defense.)
Banning sales of military-style weapons resonated with both legislators and the public: Civilians did not need to own guns designed for use in war zones.
On Sept. 13, 1994, President Bill Clinton signed an assault weapons ban into law. It barred the manufacture and sale of new guns with military features and magazines holding more than 10 rounds. But the law allowed those who already owned these guns — an estimated 1.5 million of them — to keep their weapons.
The policy proved costly. Mr. Clinton blamed the ban for Democratic losses in 1994. Crime fell, but when the ban expired, a detailed study found no proof that it had contributed to the decline.
The ban did reduce the number of assault weapons recovered by local police, to 1 percent from roughly 2 percent.
“Should it be renewed, the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement,” a Department of Justice-funded evaluation concluded.
So what does work?
“We spent a whole bunch of time and a whole bunch of political capital yelling and screaming about assault weapons,” Mayor Mitchell J. Landrieu of New Orleans said. He called it a “zero sum political fight about a symbolic weapon.”
Mr. Landrieu and Mayor Michael A. Nutter of Philadelphia are founders of Cities United, a network of mayors trying to prevent the deaths of young black men. “This is not just a gun issue, this is an unemployment issue, it’s a poverty issue, it’s a family issue, it’s a culture of violence issue,” Mr. Landrieu said.
More than 20 years of research funded by the Justice Department has found that programs to target high-risk people or places, rather than targeting certain kinds of guns, can reduce gun violence.
So if banning guns doesn’t stop the crime, then what is causing all the crime?
Dr. Michael Tanner of the libertarian Cato Institute explains in his testimony to Congress:
Welfare contributes to crime in several ways. First, children from single-parent families are more likely to become involved in criminal activity. According to one study, children raised in single-parent families are one-third more likely to exhibit anti-social behavior.(3) Moreover, O’Neill found that, holding other variables constant, black children from single- parent households are twice as likely to commit crimes as black children from a family where the father is present. Nearly 70 percent of juveniles in state reform institutions come from fatherless homes, as do 43 percent of prison inmates.(4) Research indicates a direct correlation between crime rates and the number of single-parent families in a neighborhood.(5)
As Barbara Dafoe Whitehead noted in her seminal article for The Atlantic Monthly:
The relationship [between single-parent families and crime] is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime. This conclusion shows up time and again in the literature. The nation’s mayors, as well as police officers, social workers, probation officers, and court officials, consistently point to family break up as the most important source of rising rates of crime.(6)
Don’t ban guns, ban welfare.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
I’ll admit, I’m not a hardcore “pro-gun” believer, but while I think some of those arguments are poor, I think the conclusion is probably the correct one. I have a few concerns about banning guns that I won’t bring up here because it would be preaching to the choir, but suffice it to say that I think banning assault (or any single-operator) guns would cause more (and greater) problems than it might solve.
In relation to this story and data, though, many of the anti-gun activists might argue that they would want to know (and, frankly, so would I) who those 322 people were that got killed by assault rifles. Were they mostly drug runners or were a lot of them school children, mall shoppers, and theater goers? Also, how many children, specifically, but also similar innocent bystanders are killed by handguns or other means from a “lone gunman”?
The anti-gun activists I know personally are simply most concerned about (first) the children who have been and might be killed — which I think we can all sympathize with — and (then) any other innocent bystanders who are in otherwise relatively “safe” areas.
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I noticed that there was a jump from single-parent black families to welfare. Maybe you could elaborate on how removing welfare will reduce single-parent families. Welfare as I understand it does seem to discourage functional marriage since a single mother can get more money than if she was married. I think a better solution would be to provide services for the children that includes childcare and medical rather than sending a check. I would also require the parent to be employed or to be in the process of seeking employment. Of course since I haven’t been following all the new legislation on welfare some of these types of changes may already be in place.
Back in the 80’s one of our local black pastors said that the greatest challenge to black children in America was the absence of fathers and good black role models. How can we encourage more men to take responsibility by being fathers and good role models?
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I didn’t mention race at all, and I am a person of color myself. However, since you raise it, the black family was much stronger prior to the Great Society welfare programs of LBJ, and they married in similar numbers to whites or Asians. When you pay people to be reckless, they will be reckless. And that goes for any skin color.
Any time someone says “absent father” what they really mean is that a woman chose to have sex before she was married with a man who had made no commitment to her. Focus on the choices of the women. I’m sure there were good men out there – why did they choose the bad ones for something as extreme as sex? If you want to show love for someone, there are other ways to do it.
I agree with you about services rather than money, that makes sense.
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In most (read: enough) cases, you’re right on about the “absent father” issue. Of course, we should allow that there are probably cases where the father goes absent *after* marriage, but I would guess that’s not the majority of cases.
I would also say, though, that (perhaps in the interest of brevity) you glossed over some of the other reasons people choose to have sex. Much of them have to do with the modern view of sex. It’s no longer considered extreme and it isn’t considered just a way to show love for someone. For the most part, I’d say the predominant modern secular view of sex is that it’s recreation. That’s a critical part of the problem.
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Dr. Michael Tanner was the one who first brought blacks into the conversation. I personally think that the issue extends beyond race so I think we are in agreement on that. Our society seems to moving in the direction that having a 2nd parent is a semi-functional addition to the family. Many women are taking more of the responsibility once held by the father and many men are taking less responsibility. In some cases neither parent takes responsibility. I once lived in a neighborhood where some children walked around after school with nothing to do while their parents were either absent, at work or on drugs. In some cases children under 8 walked around with their siblings that were barely old enough to walk.
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I hear what you’re saying, but 1) collecting a government check is not taking responsibility, and 2) having sex with a man you aren’t married to who wants recreational sex is not taking responsibility. It would be like if I got a stripper pregnant and then demanded she not abort the child. It would be my fault. If you don’t choose wisely and put a ring on that finger, all bets are off.
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I agree sending a check is an easy out for the government as well as for the person on welfare. Neither has to deal with the root cause. Back in the 80s I also knew people who were 3rd generation welfare and they would quickly spend any money they had without thinking about the consequences. I am in favor of welfare for a limited time to help someone get back on their feet. It also shouldn’t be a way of lifting someone out of poverty and into the middle class without changing their employment status. If they are in a minimum wage job they should seek to work hard, improve their skills and move into a better financial situation. I know that not everyone can do this but it should still be their goal so that when they can then they have the motivation. People in poverty should have to make financial decisions based on their needs. If they cannot afford cable TV, a smart phone or eating out then they should have to make the hard choices. Another hard choice may be that if you cannot afford to have kids then don’t have sex or give the child up for adoption.
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There is no such thing as an “assault weapon.” There are different kinds of guns. Some guns are scarier looking than others. Some guns are more easily used for killing people than others. But no gun ever assaulted anyone. People assault other people and sometimes they use various kinds of guns.
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It will be difficult banning welfare because the administration of welfare is itself a form of welfare. The welfare agencies and related non-profits are staffed by tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of people who are all but unemployable on the open market. The vast majority of them would be on the unemployment lines or flipping burgers.
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There is a way around this – ban public sector unions, and ban mandatory collection of union dues in private sector unions.
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